Yet another tech blog…

Category Archives: Research

Not really a massive (!) surprise but still very well deserved and a vindication of theoretical physics, science and so called “Big Science” experiments.

The official citation for Englert and Higgs reads –

“For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the Atlas and CMS experiments at Cern’s Large Hadron Collider”.

Graphene — which consists of atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms arranged hexagonally — is the new wonder material: Flexible, lightweight and incredibly conductive electrically, it’s also the strongest material known to man.

In the latest issue of Nature Photonics, researchers at MIT, Columbia University and IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center promising new application of graphene, in the photodetectors that would convert optical signals to electrical signals in integrated optoelectronic computer chips. Using light rather than electricity to move data both within and between computer chips could drastically reduce their power consumption and heat production, problems that loom ever larger as chips’ computational capacity increases.

This is phenomenal technology that could well take computing to the next level. I am not going to comment more on this until I have really digested this news and after we see how good this works in the real world. I am waiting with baited breath as this kind of thing really presses my nerd buttons!